Technology Executive Search: CPO, CTO and VP Commercial
Technology businesses need executives who combine genuine technical depth with commercial leadership. The search for that combination has always been tough, but in this age of accelerate change and development with agentic AI generating faster than governments and even creators can keep up with - these searches are critical to business success and survival.
Technology Executive Search in 2026
The technology executive search market has a fundamental tension at its core. The most technically capable candidates are often the least commercially minded. The most commercially skilled often lack genuine product and technology depth. The rare individuals who have both are the ones every technology business wants and most executive search firms cannot find.
Oldworth has built a specific capability in identifying technology executives who genuinely span this gap: CPOs who treat the product as a commercial weapon, CTOs who can hold their own in a board conversation about return on investment, and VPs of Commercial who understand how technology products actually work.
CPO Executive Search
Chief Product Officer search is one of the most demanding mandates in technology executive search. The CPO today needs to operate across product strategy, engineering leadership, commercial positioning and AI adoption simultaneously.
Candidates who succeed in CPO roles typically come from product-led technology businesses where they have scaled digital products from MVP to significant revenue, or commercial technology businesses where they have managed the intersection of product, engineering and go-to-market.
The CPO search fails when it looks only at product credentials. The role demands commercial depth. Oldworth's CPO executive search process is designed to find both.
CTO Executive Search
Chief Technology Officer search requires a different methodology from most executive search processes. The strongest CTOs are well known across their sectors, rarely active in the market and only consider a move when the mandate, the company and the cultural fit are unmistakably right.
Getting to those candidates requires relationships built over years, not a database search conducted when the brief arrives. At Oldworth, our CTO executive search work is conducted personally and confidentially from first approach to appointment and relationships have been developed over 20 years.
VP Commercial Executive Search
VP of Commercial is one of the most important and most mis-specified roles in technology executive search. Businesses often describe it in terms of sales targets when the profile they actually need is a commercial architect: someone who understands the product deeply enough to position it correctly and the organisation well enough to bring the team with them.
We placed the VP of Commercial for a large global online marketplace as a CEO successor profile, requiring exceptional commercial strategy, global profile, grit and gravitas at ExCo level. We completed it in three months.
What Makes Technology Executive Search Difficult
Three things make technology executive search genuinely hard.
The best candidates are not looking. Getting them to engage requires a different quality of conversation from the first contact.
The market moves fast. A VP of Commercial who was the right profile six months ago may have been promoted, relocated or their company acquired. Current intelligence matters more than database records. In the world of technology, these guys and gals are the rockstars, their needs and drives are on a different level, Oldworth understands what it takes and communicates early on to avoid falling at the last hurdle. We are able to support bridge the gap of what is needed and what can be provided.
Technology executive roles are becoming simultaneously more specialised and more interconnected. At Oldworth, every assessment includes a minimum of three to four hours of deep referencing before a candidate reaches our clients.
